Maybe once a week or so, I’ll get some wiseguy (sometimes with and sometimes without malice) who will respond with a Bible verse listing an Old Testament death penalty for something that sounds innocuous to modern ears. For example, someone said, “Yeah, God loves us unless we work on the Sabbath!” and quoted a verse about the death penalty.

I didn’t argue with the guy since it would be pointless, but this is a beautiful illustration of the immense chasm between theists and atheists. If the God of the Bible exists, then He is clearly the owner of everything under any type of libertarian view, and He can set whatever rules He wants for people standing on His land.

Furthermore, unless you demand immortality, no matter what, “God kills you.” The distinction between dying because of a command God gave to Moses, versus a command God gave to your failing heart or an earthquake or a lion, is not that significant in terms of moral culpability for God.

Finally, it’s entirely possible that “God kills you” for breaking a rule, and yet you still end up in heaven. (For example, some Christians think that Ananias and Sapphira were still saved, even though they fell dead at Peter’s feet when they lied about how much money they received for a land sale.)

So in light of these considerations, my wiseguy critic comes off like saying, “Oh, you think Jimmy’s dad loves him? Well then why did he send Jimmy to his room for hitting his sister at the dinner table? No loving father would do that, since all life occurs in the dining room.”

But of course, the typical atheist wouldn’t even think of things on these terms, but instead would imagine a human king imposing a rule like this. And yes, from a secular perspective, killing someone for working on the Sabbath (or talking back to parents, or committing adultery, etc.) would be horrifying.

Even so, I don’t think it’s really coherent to criticize the Bible-believing Christian (or orthodox Jew) for holding a certain belief if we strip away all of the other elements of the worldview. My critic is reduced to saying, “If we assume I’m right that God doesn’t exist, then you’re wrong Bob for saying He loves us.” Well, I can’t argue with that, but it’s also not too embarrassing to my position.

* * *

On Facebook recently I said something like this:

“Some people deny the obvious reality that humans are evil, in order to be happy. Other people accept the truth, and become miserable misanthropes. Christianity teaches you that humans are evil but shows you how to love them with joy nonetheless.”

A lot of people flipped out. Fast forward to today: I could be wrong, but I think I had a crossover from Facebook and this guy on Twitter made the following remark on my tweet about the new Transformers movie, referring back to my controversial Facebook post. And he was “right” from a secular point of view, but once again, dipping into Christianity, his snark posed no challenge. (BTW this guy comments a lot on my tweets and is generally friendly, so I don’t think this was intended to start a huge fight. Also it’s possible I am reading too much and he wasn’t referring to my FB post, but I’m pretty sure he was.)

That’s what’s so refreshing about Christianity. Even people who are mocking it end up affirming the unbelievable grandeur of Christ. For example, Bill Hicks once told some jokes bashing Christianity, and then he explained to the crowd (I’m paraphrasing), “Once when I was down South I did this routine, and after the show some guys came up and said, ‘Hey! We’re Christians and we didn’t like your jokes.’ I told them, ‘So forgive me.'”

That was (a) funny but also (b) further evidence that Jesus is the Messiah.

22 Responses to “Crusading on Twitter”

Second, whether they were or not, everyone’s sins were taken away, dealt with, forgiven and forgotten at the cross. (Hebrews 10:12-14, Hebrews 10:16-18, Acts 10:43, 1 John 2:12, 1 Peter 3:18, 1 John 3:5, Hebrews 9:28, John 1:29) 2 Cor. 5:19 tells us one of the most amazing things in the world: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.

Third, nowhere does it say that God struck them dead, which is what most people believe. It simply says they fell down and breathed their last. There are a couple of possible explanations for this, but it’s all speculation – we can have an opinion about it, but we won’t know until we, too, breathe our last.

Fourth, if God strikes people dead for lying about how much money they give to the church, there would be a lot of empty pews on Sunday.

“But of course, the typical atheist wouldn’t even think of things on these terms, but instead would imagine a human king imposing a rule like this. And yes, from a secular perspective, killing someone for working on the Sabbath (or talking back to parents, or committing adultery, etc.) would be horrifying.”

But that perspective, the human one, is the only one that you yourself could ever have any coherent understanding about. You are not God so you cannot claim to be making an intelligible argument about whether God’s punishment is cruel or otherwise.

The atheist is permitted to label the stories in the Bible as cruel and immoral, because the atheist is not necessarily claiming to understand morality from a superhuman perspective, while theists are doing that.

If you really believe “Ok sure, from a mortal human, secular perspective yes, fine, the stories are cruel…” then it doesn’t matter what follows from that. It doesn’t matter if you follow it with “…but from God’s perspective…”. This gig is already up. You can’t go any “higher” than the perspective you are built with.

Really what the statement “If God exists then He owns everything and nothing He does can be claimed as immoral” boils down to is at root just a denial of your own morality. The opposite of what you know is immoral, is transposed into an “out there” morality where it is not immoral. A moral relativism between the natural world and the supernatural world. It is literally the exact same structure of argument that statists use to justify statism.

And whoever said that the stories in the Bible per se contain God’s morality? It is one thing to believe God exists. But it is an entirely different thing to say that these stories here are the true stories about God’s morality. A Muslim who believes that apostates should be murdered, would claim that atheists should not complain or try to fight back, because Allah’s will and morality overrule silly human perspective morality.

If you are going to juxtapose theism and atheism, then you cannot assume that the only stories theists are telling are Christian stories. You have to be prepared to defend and rationalize the horrific morality in Islamic scripture that you as a Christian must accept as a morality superior to even libertarian ethics.

I dare say that your view of Christian morality was at least in part inspired and colored by your libertarian ethics. I mean, you can’t seriously believe in a supernatural morality that is impossible to square with Earthly libertarian morality.

Atheists only need to defend one thing, atheism. Theists have to defend the validity of hundreds of Gods. As a Christian, you are more atheist than theist. You disbelieve in hundreds of Gods as figments of human imagination. Atheists just go one step further and conclude that even that 500th God is also imaginary.

You are not God so you cannot claim to be making an intelligible argument about whether God’s punishment is cruel or otherwise.

You don’t need to be something in order to make an argument about it. This statement is self-refuting. “You are not Bob so you cannot claim to be making an intelligible argument about whether Bob can claim to be making an intelligible argument.”

The atheist is permitted to label the stories in the Bible

Permitted by whom? ( God? 😉 )

the atheist is not necessarily claiming to understand morality from a superhuman perspective, while theists are doing that.

Is the atheist claiming to understand morality at all? If so, from where does he derive moral authority? Ethics maybe, but morality?

A moral relativism between the natural world and the supernatural world.

Can you imagine a universe in which God exists, is moral, and allows people to die? If not, I have found your issue. If so, your argument has collapsed.

It is literally the exact same structure of argument that statists use to justify statism.

Is it difficult for you to reconcile the atheism of modern statism with your beliefs? Or do you glide right past that like so many true believers?

Theists have to defend the validity of hundreds of Gods. As a Christian, you are more atheist than theist.

I vote for this as the silliest atheist argument. If I believe that there is one God and that He is the Christian God, then I am more atheist than theist. Your post proves that you don’t actually believe this. If you did then why would you be chastising us for being 99% right? Sure, Bob and I believe that God created the universe and that we’ll go the Heaven when we die, but we don’t believe in Vishnu, so we’re basically atheists. I don’t see why you’re giving us such a hard time about our 99% accuracy. That seems like a pretty good score to me.

I agree that presumption is a sin, but I disagree that I committed it in writing that sentence. I don’t believe that I will go to heaven “no matter what.” I have faith in God’s judgement and accept Jesus as my lord and savior. I believe that I am following a path that will lead me to heaven. If I did not, I would change my path. I hope that God will accept me into heaven at my time of judgment; I do not presume His judgement.

“I hope that God will accept me into heaven at my time of judgment; I do not presume His judgement.”

Andrew, you can be assured of your salvation:

“We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may *know that you have eternal life.*” 1 John 5:9-13

The contrast between our life in Adam, dead, and in Christ, alive, is all through the New Testament. That’s the gospel – the good news – that God was in Christ, reconciling you unto Himself, not counting your sins against you, and that you can have His eternal life. If you are in Christ, you have (don’t get) eternal life. Why? Because your sins have been (not will be) forgiven. That’s what salvation is, and why you can’t lose it. Hopefully you have come to Christ not just for His forgiveness, but for His life. If you have done that, you have salvation, and cannot lose it.

Mark writes: “Andrew, you can be assured of your salvation.” Then Mark cherry-picks a Bible verse that is intended to support his personal view of the “Gospel” and “salvation.” Problem is that, ever since the Protestant Reformation, 800,000 different “Christian” denominations have broken off from each other, each of which has a slightly different view of what the “Gospel” and “salvation” are.

The men who selected and put together the books of the Bible that Mark quotes from had a different view of the “Gospel” and “salvation” than do Mark and other Protestants like him. The Church Fathers unanimously believed that you “cannot be assured of your salvation,” although you can certainly be assured of God’s love for you, and that his judgment of each individual human being will be perfectly righteous.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Protestants who reject the traditional understanding of “good works” because they want to persist in certain behaviors that are sexually immoral under traditional Catholic and Christian teaching. They want to continue to sin without repentance and still feel good about themselves, still feel that they are superior to others and will certainly go to heaven. Please understand I’m not accusing Mark of this, just wanted to add this as a general observation I’ve made over the years.

Whether these Protestants persist in their error due to a sincere and innocent misunderstanding of Christian teaching, or whether it’s a more sinister willful ignorance is not for me to judge. That is for the Lord to judge.

Doubting Thomas: “Mark cherry-picks a Bible verse that is intended to support his personal view of the “Gospel” and “salvation.””

A lie is a very poor way to say hello.

First, I didn’t cherry pick anything. Second, I was the first to post in this thread and posted ten, count ’em, ten, verses (out of many more) that show sin (what separates us from God) was dealt with once and for all at the cross.

Second, I don’t have a personal view of either the “Gospel” or “salvation.” And what’s with the quotes?

“ever since the Protestant Reformation, 800,000 different “Christian” denominations have broken off from each other, each of which has a slightly different view of what the “Gospel” and “salvation” are.”

Really? Give me a hundred of them. Just a hundred out of 800,000. If you can do that, I’ll give you the other 799,900.

“The men who selected and put together the books of the Bible that Mark quotes from”

The book of 1st John (and the others I mentioned are all in the Catholic bible, are they not?) What’s the issue about quoting a verse that is in the Catholic bible?

“had a different view of the “Gospel” and “salvation” than do Mark and other Protestants like him.”

How do you know what I believe about the gospel and salvation? And what’s with the quotes again?

“The Church Fathers unanimously believed that you “cannot be assured of your salvation,””

I’m no expert on the Church Fathers, but based on your other untruths, I doubt that statement is true. However, it is irrelevant. As Martin Luther said, “Whenever we observe that the opinions of the fathers disagree with Scripture, we reverently bear with them and acknowledge them to be our elders. Nevertheless, we do not depart from the authority of Scripture for their sake.”

Unfortunately, there are a lot of Catholics who reject the traditional understanding of “good works” because they want to persist in molesting young boys and/or participating in homosexual behavior, which is immoral under traditional Catholic and Christian teaching. They want to continue to sin without repentance and still feel good about themselves, still feel that they are superior to others and will certainly go to heaven. Please understand I’m not accusing Thomas of this, just wanted to add this as a general observation I’ve made over the years.

Whether these Catholics persist in their error due to a sincere and innocent misunderstanding of Christian teaching, or whether they just plain lost because they have rejected the truth of God’s word, and more importantly, the Lord Jesus Himself, is not for me to judge. I just know that blind obedience to ritual and tradition that is contrary to God’s word won’t save anyone. A theology where you are responsible for your salvation – as opposed to Jesus having done it all for us – is right out of the pit of Hell.

As soon as I submitted the post above, I remembered another comment I wanted to make. When Thomas accused me of cherry picking a verse, the implication was that it is contradicted by others. As I mentioned, I had previously mentioned ten others that support the fact that the sin issue has been dealt with.

But in looking specifically at 1 John 5:9-13, notice I made a point of emphasizing “that you may know that you have eternal life.” Let’s all be patient while Thomas looks for an equally clear verse that tells us we can’t know that we have eternal life. And another verse that tells us eternal doesn’t mean eternal.

Dear Mark, I am sorry you’re so angry and would write something so anti-Catholic and bigoted. Not to mention disjointed and really all over the place! As I mentioned, the Lord wins in the end. You are welcome to believe what you choose. We all have to answer to God.

Ha-ha. Pretty funny. Neither angry, nor bigoted. I am anti-Catholic doctrine, though, but not anti-Catholic. You, otoh, appear quite angry based on the garbage you wrote in response to my post and have an amazing double standard (we normally call that hypocrisy.) And the Lord doesn’t win in the end, He won 2000 years ago on a cross.

Also, my name IS Mark. I have no idea what you mean by your comments below, unless you are implying that I am another poster or posters here. I am not. I have posted here before – always (I think) on issues related to Christianity. I don’t think I’ve posted much if at all re economics. Bob has my permission to confirm that since, I assume, he has access to my email address, etc. Ask him. As far as your coward and jerk comments, what are you, eight?

Nope, not what I was saying. Pls tell “Mark” to settle down, too. He did, after all, call all Catholics homo child molesters. Not cool, folks. But then again, if once saved always saved, then I guess calumny against an entire group of people doesn’t matter, since you’re saved anyway.